On May 31st, 2012 the Maxwell family boarded a plane and moved to Swaziland to live at Project Canaan. I hope to update my blog on Saturday mornings and share, as honestly as I can, the highs and lows of our life in Africa. We are living on a farm in a remote part of this tiny Kingdom and are serving the community as well as the orphans and vulnerable children of the nation. The 365 day count down started on June 1st, 2011, but the real journey begins now. Thanks for joining us.

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Saturday, October 31, 2015

Some of you know that we are praying for rain.Two of our dams are dry and the Living
Water dam is almost too low to pump water and irrigate our crops.There is no way for us to know how much
water is left in the wells that we get our drinking water from.

But our irrigated fields still look green, while the hills
surrounding us remain brown, or on fire due to the dry grass and high winds.

The fire up behind the Emseni Children's home last night. Photo Credit: Chris Cheek.

In June 2015 it was predicted that the drought that was
ensuing would kill an estimated 200,000 cattle if there was not immediate
government intervention.

Today I sat down with Anthony and got a report from our work
in the surrounding community and with our 27 church partners and I was given a
much deeper understanding of what“drought” really means today in Swaziland.

The number of children seeking food in each of our church
partners has increased by 25% in the past two months.

But I was confused.I asked why the lack of water now would be cause more children to be
hungry, when the food they are eating now would have been grown in last years
crop?Here is how it was explained
to me.

The maize that is the staple to the Swazi diet is planted in
October/November and harvested in March/April.It is then dried and stored, to be eaten throughout the
year.The harvests in the past
decade have decreased and so the maize has not lasted from one year to the next.Swazi’s have used the “early rains”
which typically start falling in mid-September through October to plant back
yard gardens, which provides with healthy food quickly while they wait for
their maize to be planted and harvested.Also, they typically are required to sell a cow or some goats to pay for
seeds, fertilizer and food to get the family through the gap.

The drought is killing the cattle and thereby leaving
Swazi’s in an even more dire situation.Even we at Project Canaan have lost 5 cows in the past month.Sickness, heat, snakes and disease are
hard to manage even when you have full-time dairy staff, outside expertise and
veterinarian support.The rural
Swazi has none of these.

So, here is what is happening.

There are no cows to sell because thousands have already
died and the ones that are still alive are too thin and sickly to sell.There have been no early rains so the
ground is hard and dry and gardens cannot be prepared and planted.Even many of our church partners who
had access to year-around water no longer have it and their gardens have
died.

I also received more deadly news from Gebeni, the community beside us. I was told that there are many people there who are on ART (Anti-retroviral Treatment) for HIV/AIDS who are now stopping their treatment because they know that proper nutrition is a critical part of the efficacy of the medication that is so hard on their internal organs. Going off treatment will make their infectiousness increase and death will come faster. UGH!

I did receive some good news while I was in Taiwan, and that was
that King Mswati III made a public declaration that the drought was officially
over. We are thankful for that and look forward to the rain falling soon.

In the meantime, if you can contribute to our ongoing
feeding program we would very much appreciate it.Thanksgiving is right around the corner and maybe you would
consider making one less pie or reduce the variety of wonderful treats and
instead give to help us feed the orphans and vulnerable children of
Swaziland?A $50 donation will
purchase 110 pounds of maize, which will feed up to 250 children.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

I have been in Taiwan for the past two weeks as a guest of
the 10th International Youth Conference that Mr. Lewis Lu hosts each
year.A big part of this event is fundraising
and awareness building for Heart for Africa.This year Mr. Lu made an incredible addition to the
conference called the 2015 Malala Youth Award.

I am sure you remember young Malala Yousafzai, a Pakastani
activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate.She is known mainly for being shot in
the head and then rising up with a passion and advocating for education and for
women in her native Pakistan.She
is who this award was designed and named after.

One
of the recipients of this new award was a young lady named Memory Banda.She is 18-years old and is from the
southern part of Malawi.In her
culture young girls are taken to “initiation camps” or “sex camps” as soon as
they start menstruating.The camp
is two weeks long and it is a secret what is taught and done at the camp.The camp was designed generations ago
to welcome girls to womanhood. They are taught about sex, pregnancy,
childbirth, child care, how to sexually please your husband and how to provide
care for your husband and as many children as he decides you should have. At
the end of the camp a man from the community is paid to come and have sex with
the girls, and prepare them for marriage.

Girls
who had gone through the initiation camp were not allowed to tell the younger
girls what had happened to them. After all, it was all a part of becoming a
woman. Memory refused to go to the camp when she was of the right age because
she had a bad feeling about it. But her refusal was met by a serious scolding by
the elders in the community and resulted in her being ostracized because of her
disrespect and rebelliousness.Shortly thereafter her 11-year-old sister got
her period and was sent to the camp.When she returned home, she had changed. She was quiet, reclusive and
afraid, but she would not talk about the camp other than to say that she was
now a woman.

Several
months later it was discovered that Memory’s sister was pregnant – a result of
the forced sex (rape) at the sex camp.Even though the pregnancy was not of her doing, the family was ashamed
and she was forced to marry the man who had raped her.Memory was devastated for her sister
and at that moment vowed to change the archaic cultural practices that invaded
the lives and took away the rights of the girls of Malawi.

Memory
worked diligently with the other girls in her community, and many girls clubs
were started through an NGO called “Girls Empowerment Network”.On weekends they would meet and talk
about human rights, gender equality as well as topics such as reproductive
health and safety.At that time
the legal marrying age in Malawi was 15-years old, but that law was not
enforced in the rural communities.

That
network of girls grew exponentially and as Memory said, “Once the girls united,
we amplified our voices”.Within a
few years the girls were in front of Parliament and the legal marrying age was
changed to 16 and then later to 18.

Laws
are a very important part of change in any country, but particularly when it
relates to gender based violence or human inequality.While the rural communities may continue to marry girls at a
young age, there are now laws, and education around those laws, by which the
girls can seek assistance.

I
learned a lot from Memory this week as well as Khalidi Mngulu from Tanzania who
is the youth representative for the country speaking out on behalf of the Albino
community.Albino’s in many
African countries are considered “lucky” (in a superstitious way) and if people
want to get rich they often cut off body parts of Albinos (arms, ears, fingers,
legs) and take them to the local witch doctor to be made in to a powerful
potion.We don’t see that in
Swaziland, we see albinos being killed and sacrificed whole, not in pieces.

Oh
Africa, my beloved Africa.Why am
I drawn to you so?

The students at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ready to present the challenges of their countries.

I
am forever changed by the young people I met this week, and while the things I
learned will never be forgotten, I am more hopeful that the youth of today is
preparing a revolution of change.As a dear friend said to me this week, “Something’s gotta give."

Saturday, October 17, 2015

I had an “ah ha” moment this week while I was preparing to
speak to 300 students at Changhua Senior High School in Taiwan.

I was talking about the topic of hope.Then I talked about hopelessness.Then I talked about evil.And as I prepared for my presentation a
link between the three became very clear to me.

I used three examples of hopelessness; Baby Shirley, Baby
River and Little Phephile.

Baby Shirley’s mother was hopeless, so much so that she felt
the only option she had was to dump her newborn baby in a pit latrine and then
dump fire on top of her and left her to die.

Shirley "before".

Shirley "after".

Baby River’s mother was so hopeless that after she gave
birth to him she put him in a plastic bag and then dumped him in the river,
and left him to be eaten by river crabs.

River "before".

River "after".

Little Phephile’s mother was so hopeless that she was
powerless to stop a year of abuse by family members that resulted in Phephile’s
arm to be broken in five places and her leg broken in two places.

Phephile "before".

Phephile "after".

I find that people who hear these stories are quick to judge
these mothers and call them “evil”.They are also quick to sentence them for their crimes and demand the
harshest of punishment.But I
don’t see it that way. I have looked directly in to the eyes of Shirley’s
mother and Phephile’s mother and what I saw was hopelessness.They were empty, dead inside, with no
options, and no hope.

I showed my Taiwanese students before and after photos of
these three children. The before photos represented hopelessness, and the after
photos represented hope.And then
showed them a quote by Edmund Burke that I find very powerful.It says: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing.”

Could it be that hopelessness turns in to evil when good men
and women do nothing?

Could it be that River, Shirley and Phephile would not have
had to suffer if their mothers could have found people who cared and acted to
help them before their hopeless turned to an act of evil?

Oh how I wish we could have helped these young women when
they were in need rather than having to try to put the pieces back together
after their babies were injured.

After my speech was finished a young man came up to me and
was visibly moved. He said that he has always wanted to
stand up against injustice and make a difference in the world, but he has
always been told that he wasn’t good enough and would never make a difference.
I told him that he had been told lies, that he was powerful beyond measure.Later in the day he sent me a message
that read, “Today, after listening to your speech, l felt
something turned to be different in my heart.”

Working and living in Africa has taught me that hope is
life-saving, and life-giving.And
hopelessness is life-taking and life-threatening.

On my darkest days when I am discouraged or wanting to give
up it is inevitable that I get an message from someone from around the world writing
to encourage me and remind me to keep my eyes on our only true hope … Jesus.
Those words are always timely and are exactly what I needed to hear.

I pray that each of us will reach out to others with words
of true HOPE when we feel prompted to do so.You may just save a life.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Last November there was a small team of people who came to Swaziland from The
Village Christian Church in Minooka, Illinois, including the Pastor, Nate
Ferguson.Pastor Nate started the
church in 2004 with only 40 people in it's first congregation.

Pastor Nate’s sister, Sarah Windham, travelled with him as
well as his brother Jeremy and his wife Raelenna and a couple of their
children.Nate was very interested
in what we are doing at Project Canaan and asked LOTS of questions, with the
hope of finding some way for their church to get involved.

They came up with the idea of getting their church involved
in selling Heart for Africa Christmas Tree Ornaments. They wanted to do something
BIG that would require God to be involved for them to be successful.They asked if they could order 2,000
ornaments!! WHAT?! That would be $20,000 US in sales! Of course our answer was
“yes!”

I believe it was only a few minutes later that Pastor Nate
started to panic.You see, they
are in the middle of a Capital Campaign for a new church building, the church
is in growth mode, they are adding staff, expanding mission team and now, they
were selling Christmas Tree Ornaments.The
family went to their knees, and prayed, and He heard their prayers.

Two Sunday’s ago they launched their Ornament Campaign to
their 400 church members.Sarah
made up 40 bags with 26 ornaments ($260) and 96 bags with 10 ornaments ($100).By the end of the day 1,400 ornaments
had left with church members who were committed to selling them and brining the
money back by November 1st.

Why did she pack them in bags of 26?Well, for every 26 ornaments that sell, we can fully cover all the costs for one child at the El
Roi Baby home for a month (food, bottles, diapers, clothes, medical, Aunties,
night shift etc).Not to mention
that we are employing 54 full time people on Project Canaan JUST to make these
ornaments!

Eight days later they only had 10 ornaments left out of the
2,000 we had shipped them.

Yesterday Sarah ordered 300 more … and it was only October 9th.

Here is a short history of this idea.In 2013 (October and November only) we
handmade and sold 1,200 Angel ornaments.In 2014 we handmade and sold 8,000 Angel and Tree ornaments.This year we have handmade and sold
approximately 11,000 up to today, October 10th, and we made 12,000 of
them in total (!).

We only have Stars and Trees in stock in the US right now as
our Angels have completely sold out, BUT we are going back in to full
production at Khutsala Artisans on Monday morning and we will have more
beautiful ornaments in the US office by the end of October.

I am told that Pastor Nate has calmed down, has completely
seen the hand of God on this and no doubt is thankful for his sister’s
tenacity, organizational skills and faith!While he is thrilled to be able to support us in a
significant financial way, his heart’s desire is to tell people about what God
is doing through Heart for Africa in Swaziland, and clearly that is being
accomplished.

I am so very proud of Pastor Nate, Sarah and the entire
church for taking this leap of faith. It is so exciting to see how excited YOU
are and how blessed you are being for your commitment. Thank you for being such
a great example of people who step out in faith, and then watch to see what God
does.

If any of you want to play a bigger part in the 2016 Heart
for Africa Christmas ornament Campaign, please email me directly at janine@heartforafrica.org.

But in the meantime, it’s time to order your ornaments by CLICKING HERE.

At this
time we do not have an online store on our Canadian website, but you may email
Stephanie for Canadian orders – Stephanie@heartforafrica.org

Thank you
for shopping and for your support.

Live from
Swaziland … I am taking Christmas ornament orders to Taiwan tomorrow!

Janine

PSIf you live in the Minooka,
Illinois area and want to buy ornaments from
them please call The Village Christian Church at 815-467-2265 and ask for Super
Sarah :)